When tonight's Opening Ceremony kicks off for the 2012 London Olympic Games, all eyes will be on what has been hailed in the lead-up as “the digital Olympics” or “the world’s first social Games”. And while so much will be captured during the Games themselves, the social revolution around the Games began weeks if not months ago for both athletes and sponsors.

The 25 main global and local sponsors have paid dearly for their official rights. Estimates of up to $1.6 billion have been reported. But of course sponsorship rights are just part of the cost. Much more is spent on marketing activity to maximize sponsors’ involvement and support.Advertising Age recently reported on some of the more significant campaigns, and some of these sponsors also highlighted their Olympic programs when their CMOs spoke at last month’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Coca-Cola’s Joe Tripodi showcased the brand’s “Move to the Beat” effort aimed at teens globally. Visa’s Antonio Lucio spoke about his brand featuring triumphant moments in Olympic history – and Olympic Gold Medal Winner Nadia Comaneci joined his seminar on the main stage. And P&G’s Marc Pritchard presented his brand’s “Proud Sponsor of Mom” campaign, complete with “mommymetries” aka short documentaries about mom, or mum in some parts of the world. Other brands championing major Olympic programs include McDonald’s with its “Champions of Play” campaign, GE with its Healthy Share app on Facebook, and Samsung with its US Olympic Genome Project.

All of these campaigns kicked in long before tonight's Opening Ceremony. UK social media consultancy Sociagility started tracking Olympic sponsors' social media profiles 100 days ago. At first, P&G led by a long shot, followed by BMW and Cadbury in the silver and bronze positions respectively. But last week's scorecard shows Coca-Cola winning gold, followed by British Airways and adidas. P&G had dropped down to 8th position followed by BMW as a top performer.

With such a dynamic shift on the social Olympic leader board, it will be interesting to see further movement during the Games. It may be that brands like Coke and adidas have more affinity with the Olympics versus newer sponsors like P&G, Cadbury and BMW. Only time will tell. There certainly is no shortage of activity in the main social channels, and much of the conversation is likely to be around the Olympics during the Games. In his article “Why Social Media Will Reshape the 2012 Olympics,” Mashable’s Sam Laird recently documented social’s growth since the last Olympics, from 6 million registered Twitter users to 500 million since 2008; and from 100 million Facebook users to more than 900 million in the same time frame. Worth checking out the Infographic he also posted on “How Mobile, Social Will Win the 2012 Olympics” sourced from Nielsen, eMarketer and Forrester.

Yesterday’s release of Sociagility’s study of social media performance of the Republican primary candidates correlates strongly with Iowa voting intention in the lead-up to today’s Iowa caucus, as compared to the most recent polling data from Public Policy Polling. The study shows the importance of an effective social media profile for political brands as much as for products or services, and provides further credibility for Sociagility’s PRINT™ methodology as one of the best KPIs for judging the ROI from social media marketing.

What I like about the PRINT methodology is the analysis behind not just one social media channel, but how the social media channels interact and integrate with each other. PRINT provides a single number that shows overall performance compared to a defined set of competitors – in this case, the GOP primary candidates. So far, PRINT has been proven to correlate strongly with brand value and growth, as defined by the Interbrand Brand Value and WPP BrandZ studies, and it therefore provides a KPI for social media performance that can be used to set and track targets.

For GOP candidates, Sociagility analyzed the popularity, receptiveness, interaction, network reach and trust (aka PRINT) of candidates across different social media channels. Ron Paul’s campaign website and YouTube channel, and Newt Gingrich’s Twitter and Facebook profiles, proved the most effective. Paul achieved the best interaction, network and trust scores, while Gingrich’s social media presence demonstrated the highest level of receptiveness.

Another study released yesterday from Socialbakers (and Infographic) revealed the most engaging and influential US presidential candidates on Facebook, but the study is limited to the one social media channel and there’s no correlation with polling data to demonstrate how social media is driving voting preference. Its findings seem to be more one-dimensional than those of Sociagility, which makes its scores less actionable for the social media strategists among us.

With clients now accounting for 20 percent of Cannes delegates, the Festival was a good place to launch my new book. In fact, overall attendance at Cannes this year was up to a new record level attracting something like an additional 2,000 to around 11,000 delegates.

As well as engaging in the Festival, many of the senior marketers took the stage. Unilever CEO Paul Polman and CMO Keith Weed were interviewed about the challenges facing their business by WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell. Polman introduced three drivers of change in marketing which is creating “the new normal”:

1. The shift of economic power to the east and the south 2. Digital and technology 3. Sustainability

Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke was interviewed by Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy, and other CMOs took the stage to present their brands, discuss challenges and talk about new directions. Andy Fennell, CMO of Diageo, said that flair, agility, consumer insight and execution are the four fundamentals of Diageo’s marketing and creative process. Jim Farley of Ford talked about the client’s role as creative coach in a new people-powered reality which is totally in line with some of the points made in my book.

Some brands brought some star power to the stage. Dana Anderson, SVP of marketing strategy and communications at Kraft Foods introduced Malcolm Gladwell, and Yahoo’s Ross Levinsohn, EVP of the America’s region, interviewed Robert Redford. Dana also ran a Master Class with Rob Reilly of Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Some CMOs were fortunate enough to pick up some impressive awards. Noel Wijsmans, global retail manager and vice president of IKEA Group, picked up the Cannes Lions Advertiser of the Year. Given that the Festival has been renamed to honor Creativity rather than the traditional moniker of Advertising, perhaps the title of that award should be changed as well?

Mark Pritchard, chief marketing and brand building officer of P&G, took the stage three times on the final awards night to pick up an Integrated Gold Lion AND a Creative Effectiveness Lion for Wieden & Kennedy’s Old Spice campaign, and a Creative Effectiveness Lion for BBDO India’s Gillette campaign entitled “Women Against Lazy Stubble.” And P&G CEO Bob McDonald also was at Cannes taking an interest and getting quoted.

MaryLee Sachs

Founder • CEO BrandPie Inc.

In addition to writing two books about CMOs, both of which launched at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, MaryLee writes for the Forbes CMO Network and has remained highly active in the marketing space. She launched and leads The Conference Board's Council for CMOs, and she has been an advising member of the Marketing 50 and The CMO Club in the US. In the UK, she remains a member of the Marketing Group of Great Britain and the Marketing Society. She launched BrandPie Inc in 2014 as the sister firm to successful London-based BrandPie Ltd, a brand consultancy specializing in purpose, identity and engagement - the PIE of BrandPie.